Gordon puts it all on line for shot at Tokyo qualification

Martin Gordon: 'There's a lot of pressure'

Cathal Dennehy

March 24 2021 02:30 AM

It all comes down to this: on Saturday in Mallorca, Spain, the gate holding the wheel of his tandem bike will release, and Martin Gordon will set off, churning his pedals with maximal force, unleashing a violent outburst of power and speed that will last a little over 60 seconds.

Together with pilot Eamonn Byrne, he’ll throttle through four laps of the velodrome and the time at the finish will decide whether or not they go to Tokyo for the Paralympic Games.

Ireland has so far qualified three bikes but it’s yet to be decided who will fill those places. The endurance riders have until May to find competitive opportunities but, with things as they are, this is likely the closest Gordon will get to prove his medal credentials in the 1,000m time trial before the Games.

He’s planning to make it count. The Sligo native took leave from his job as a barrister in the legal division of An Garda Síochána to hone his preparations in Mallorca. Over the past year he’s made do as well as he could, powering around the Sundrive outdoor track when the weather allows and practising his starts ad nauseam using electronic gates at the Sport Ireland Institute in Abbotstown, the dream of an indoor velodrome still some way from realisation.

“Since we got the opportunity to come to Mallorca we hit the ground running. A huge part of what we do is strength and conditioning and we’ve gone way beyond what we did previously. So much comes down to how we come out of that start gate; I wanted to come out like a bullet,” he says.

Having narrowly missed qualification for the 2016 Paralympics, Gordon heeded what tests had long deemed his physiological calling and switched to sprints, teaming up with Byrne in October that year.

“There was huge disappointment not making Rio but I’m a different athlete in sprinting,” he says.

They click as well off the bike as they do on it. “You need someone open to change, adaptation and you have to be patient, tolerant. You have to do everything effectively together in an event that’s down to hundredths of a second.”

Gordon was born with glaucoma and underwent multiple operations as a child to maintain his sight. But at the age of 17, he suffered a detached retina and went fully blind, describing it at the time as a “worst nightmare coming true”.

He found a way to adapt and sat his Leaving Cert the following year before going on to graduate from NUI Galway with a degree in legal science, sociology and politics. In 2007, he took part in the annual Mizen to Malin charity cycle which was “the spark that lit the flame” for him as a cyclist.

He knows all the work done in the saddle ever since has led to this, a rare chance he needs to seize.“ There’s a lot of pressure,” he admits. But he’s never been more ready.

Martin Gordon was speaking at the launch of Paralympics Ireland’s new fundraising campaign ‘The Next Level’